The blog of the design, construction, and launching of the vessels "The Floating Empire" and "Tesla's Revenge", both floating tinyhomes made from recycled or repurposed materials.

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Saturday, May 30, 2015

Ivation Portable Shower Review

One of the things that went wrong when we first launched the Floating Empire was that, with our floatation in place, we were too tall for the roads. As a result, we wound up putting all our floats inside the aft of the boat for transit. . . .

19, count em, 19 floats where the studio and stairs should be. . .

. . .oh, and the head as well....

. . .which, of course, meant that we couldn't finish the internal walls, the aft stairs, and a whole host of other things to make sure we had room to accommodate them. Over the last year, we've been piddling away at stuff, installing the aft stairs, finally framing in the matchstick blind walls surrounding the tub (great idea, btw. Privacy, but LOTS of airflow.), and a thousand other small things that needed doing. Finally, this week, we decided it was time to actually make our tub/shower setup functional.

Floating Empire lacks a pressurized water system. This was a conscious choice to keep things simple. In casting about for a way to make things work back there, we came across this:

Ivation battery powered shower

We were familiar with Ivation from our mini dehumidifier, and knew their stuff was, in general, relatively well made, so we thought we'd give the $40 unit a shot. It features a submersible pump with a lithium battery incorporated. The device charges from any usb outlet in about two hours.

In practice, the use is pretty simple: We fill a two gallon container with river water, add a teakettle's worth of boiling water, and plunk it down in the tub. Turn on the pump, plunk it in the bucket, and you have a hot shower.

Submersible pump with waterproof switch.

The motor is fairly quiet, and the flow rate of the water is more than adequate, which rather surprised us.

The rate of flow is just fine for washing hair.

With summer coming on and the crowds returning to the marina, not having to rely on getting into the shower when you want to is a major plus.

A happy, damp, clean Morgainne

All in all, the little unit seems to work quite well, though it does lack any kind of shut off on the shower head itself. The only other negative we've found so far is the unfortunate tendency for the hose to pop off the compression fitting that holds it to the pump. Adding a tiny bit of tape under the fitting seems to have fixed that. I could see this gizmo being handy for chores like washing decks, doing dishes, and the like. It would also be handy for washing your hair when in the bath.

Nothing like a cool bath on a hot muggy day.

So now, with the tub and shower working, we feel like all the systems we'd originally intended for Floating Empire are now either functioning or discarded. Only took us a year. Stay tuned for other quick results.